Feng Shui: History, Principles and the Chinese Art of Siting

Feng shui (風水, "wind and water") is the Chinese art of siting graves, houses, temples and cities so that they receive the beneficial flow of qi, the vital breath of the landscape, judged by the shape of mountains and watercourses and by compass directions calculated with yin-yang, the five phases and the trigrams of the I Ching. It developed from early methods of choosing burial sites and became, in late imperial China, a professional craft practised with the geomantic compass, or luopan.

Wind and Water: The Meaning and Origins of Feng Shui§

The choice of auspicious places is ancient in China. Shang and Zhou texts record divination about where to found a settlement, and Han dynasty bibliographies list works on kanyu, a term usually understood as "canopy and carriage", that is, heaven and earth, which became a literary name for geomancy. The words "feng shui" are linked to the Book of Burial (Zangshu), traditionally attributed to the scholar and diviner Guo Pu (276–324), though the received text is probably later. It states that qi rides the wind and is dispersed, but is held where it meets water; the ancients gathered it so that it would not scatter and guided it so that it would stop, and therefore called the art "wind and water".

Western writers sometimes call feng shui "Chinese geomancy". This is a convenient label, but it should not be confused with the European and Islamic divination by figures of dots, described in geomancy.

Qi, Dragon Veins and the Ideal Site§

Feng shui rests on the same cosmology as Chinese medicine and yin-yang and five-phase theory. The earth is pictured as a living body through which qi circulates along "dragon veins" (longmai), the ridges of mountain ranges descending from great sources such as the Kunlun mountains. Where a vein comes to rest and its qi accumulates, at a "lair" or "cave" (xue), lies the auspicious site.

The ideal site is often compared to an armchair: protected behind by higher ground, embraced on either side by lower hills, and open in front onto a plain with gently meandering water. Straight lines, sharp ridges and fast, direct watercourses were considered harmful, because they scatter qi or direct "killing" or "noxious" qi toward a site. Historians note that many of these preferences, for shelter from northern winds, sunny southern exposure and access to water, also make practical sense in the Chinese climate, though practitioners understood them cosmologically.

The Form School and the Four Celestial Animals§

From the late imperial period two broad approaches were distinguished. The Form School (also called the Jiangxi school or the school of forms and configurations) reads the shapes of landforms. It is associated with the Tang-dynasty geomancer Yang Yunsong, whose life is largely legendary.

The Form School pictures the protected site in terms of the four directional animals of Chinese cosmology: the Black Tortoise (or Dark Warrior) behind, ideally to the north, a high mountain; the Azure Dragon on the left (east), a range of hills somewhat higher than the White Tiger on the right (west); and the Vermilion Bird in front (south), a low hill or open space across the water. Mountains are further classified by shape according to the five phases, wood being tall and upright, fire pointed, earth flat-topped, metal rounded, and water undulating.

The Compass School and the Luopan§

The Compass School (or Fujian school, the school of principles and patterns) analyses a site by direction and time. Its instrument, the luopan, is a magnetic compass set in a wooden plate inscribed with concentric rings: the eight trigrams of the I Ching, the heavenly stems and earthly branches, the twenty-four directions or "mountains", the twenty-eight lunar mansions and other cycles. Large professional compasses may carry dozens of rings.

The history of the compass is entangled with geomancy. Han-dynasty diviners used a cosmic board (shi) with a rotating heaven-plate, and a lodestone "south-pointer" may have been used on such boards, though this is debated. The magnetic needle, and its declination from true north, is clearly described by the scholar Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088. Joseph Needham argued that geomantic practice played a significant role in the development of the compass before it was used for navigation.

Later Compass School methods include the "Eight Mansions", which match a house's orientation with the occupant's birth trigram, and "Flying Stars", which tracks the movement of nine "stars" through the sectors of a building over time, combining feng shui with Chinese astrology. In practice, most traditional geomancers used both forms and compass.

Graves and Houses: Yin and Yang Dwellings§

Feng shui distinguishes yin dwellings, graves, from yang dwellings, houses, palaces, temples and cities. Grave siting was historically the more important. Because the bones of ancestors were thought to transmit the qi of the site to their descendants, a well-placed grave could bring sons, wealth and success in the examinations, and a badly placed one misfortune; the anthropologist Maurice Freedman noted that this made ancestors something like instruments in the hands of the living. Families sometimes delayed burials for years to find the right site, and disputes over graves led to lawsuits and feuds. See ancestor veneration.

For yang dwellings, geomancers judged the orientation of the main gate, the arrangement of rooms, and the timing of construction. Capital cities were planned according to cosmological principles: Beijing's north–south axis and the Ming emperors' tombs north of the city are classic examples. Feng shui ideas also spread across East Asia, as pungsu in Korea and fūsui in Japan, where the siting of the Heian capital (Kyoto) in 794 has been linked to the "four guardian" ideal, alongside the yin-yang specialists of Onmyōdō.

Feng Shui in History: Emperors, Missionaries and Railways§

Feng shui was practised by people of every class, but it was never uncontroversial. Confucian scholars, among them the Song thinker Sima Guang, criticised the delay of burials and the commercial greed of geomancers, while others defended the art. The imperial state itself employed geomancers to site palaces and imperial tombs, while some officials tried to curb the excesses of popular practice.

European observers often treated feng shui as the chief obstacle to modernisation. The missionary Ernest Eitel published a sympathetic but critical study in 1873, and in the late nineteenth century there were disputes when railways, telegraph lines and mines were said to cut dragon veins or disturb graves. Twentieth-century reformers in China condemned feng shui as superstition, and in the People's Republic it was suppressed for decades before reviving after the 1980s. Ole Bruun's fieldwork shows how it survived in rural China as a mixture of popular religion, practical knowledge and family strategy.

Feng Shui Today: Revival, Commerce and Criticism§

In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, feng shui consultants are commonly employed for homes, offices and public buildings, and the practice is part of everyday conversation. From the 1980s feng shui also became popular in the West, often in simplified forms concerned with interior decoration, colour and the placement of furniture. One influential version, associated with Thomas Lin Yun (1932–2010) and the "Black Hat" school, orients a grid of eight trigrams, the bagua map, by the front door rather than by the compass, a method that traditional practitioners regard as a modern innovation.

Scientific studies have not found evidence that feng shui affects health or fortune beyond psychological and environmental factors such as light, ventilation and comfort. Historians and anthropologists nevertheless treat it as a significant part of Chinese religion and culture, revealing how the landscape, the dead and the living were understood as one interconnected system.

Frequently asked questions§

What does feng shui mean?§

Feng shui means "wind and water". The phrase comes from a classical description of qi, which is scattered by wind and gathered where it meets water. The art seeks sites where beneficial qi collects.

What is a luopan?§

A luopan is the geomantic compass of feng shui: a magnetic needle set in a plate with concentric rings of trigrams, stems and branches, directions and other cycles. It is used by the Compass School to calculate orientations.

Is feng shui Taoist?§

Feng shui shares its cosmology of qi, yin and yang and the five phases with Taoism, and Taoist priests sometimes practise it, but it was a professional craft used by people of all religions in China. It is best seen as part of the common Chinese religious and cosmological culture.

Sources and further reading§

• Feng-Shui: or, The Rudiments of Natural Science in China — Ernest J. Eitel, 1873
• An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Geomancy — Stephan D. R. Feuchtwang, 1974
• Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion — Ole Bruun, 2003
• An Introduction to Feng Shui — Ole Bruun, 2008
• Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4, part 1: Physics — Joseph Needham, 1962
• Religion in Chinese Society — C. K. Yang, 1961